Mark Scheifele

Post navigation

The magic date is February 18, 2016. Since that day – which lord knows in Winnipeg was probably a cold, dark, bone-chillingly frigid day – Scheifele has assembled a 49-67-116 line in 105 NHL contests. Only Connor McDavid (37-86-123) and Sidney Crosby (56-65-121) have a higher offensive output over that span. I’ll admit that putting Scheifele as the NHL’s 11th-best center feels like a low-ball ranking. This is an elite-level player.

12 – Claude Giroux

A guy who has been a workhorse and point producer over the past seven or eight years. Giroux has 548 points going back to the start of the 2009-10 season, averaging 73.4 points per 82 games. He’s missed just 10 games over that span, regularly playing in the neighborhood of 20 minutes per night. A player in the running for the second-best faceoff man in the world (yes, Patrice Bergeron is in his own class).

13 – Ryan Kesler

I liken Kesler to Boston’s Brad Marchand. You put up with the occasional dumb penalty for all the other great things he does. While the consensus sometimes seems to be that the 33-year-old is not the player he once was – from what could simply be a case of ageism – he’s still bringing it. Another guy in the running for second-best faceoff man in the world, Kesler has won a league-high 1,213 defensive zone draws since being traded to Anaheim from Vancouver in 2014. Kesler, who averaged 21:18 of ice-time last season, was the only forward in the NHL to average 2:30 of both powerplay and shorthanded time in 2016-17. Kesler is expected to be out until December as he recovers from hip surgery, and Anaheim will be worse off as a result.

14 – Ryan Johansen

Ironic that Kesler and Johansen are right next to one another after their no-love-lost battle in the Western Conference Final last season. But in all seriousness, Johansen is going to be a superstar in this league for many years to come. Over the last four seasons, the 25-year-old has posted 60 points every year while missing just two regular season games. The Predators win the Stanley Cup if he doesn’t go down with a thigh injury in the Western final.

15 – Ryan O’Reilly

If the Sabres had a better supporting cast, they’d be a slam dunk for the playoffs because there’s not many top-two center/top-defenseman/goalie tandems in the league than the one that exists in Buffalo with O’Reilly, Jack Eichel, Rasmus Ristolainen, and Robin Lehner. Eichel called O’Reilly Buffalo’s Bergeron over the summer, and that’s a spot-on assessment. O’Reilly – who has led all NHL forwards in time on ice per game in each of his two seasons in Buffalo – does everything for the Sabres, playing in high-leverage situations and taking virtually every key faceoff. O’Reilly was the only player besides Bergeron to finish with a faceoff win percentage above 58 percent among players that took more than 1,500 draws last season.

Mark Scheifele has been among the five or 10 best players in the NHL over the past year-plus. And now people are beginning to notice.

The Jets forward extended his streak with multiple points to three on Thursday night with a pair of goals in Winnipeg’s 4-3 win over Dallas, an ‘all-out assault on opposing goalies‘, as Rotowire coined Scheifele’s performance. He has four goals in that three-game span to go along with seven points. He now has seven multi-point games since the start of the new year, and is sixth overall in the NHL with 53 points in 51 games, tied with Alex Ovechkin for third with 25 goals.

Scheifele has been the nucleus of what has been one of the best forward lines in the NHL this season, flanked by super-rookie Patrik Laine and Nikolaj Ehlers, the former top-10 pick in the draft that is having a breakout year in his second NHL season, with 47 points in 54 games. Without that trio, which accounts for 33.7 percent of Winnipeg’s scoring, the Jets would be nowhere near their current standing of trailing St. Louis by one point for eighth place in the Western Conference playoff picture.

This is nothing new. It’s something Scheifele has been up to for quite some time now. Scheifele has 42 goals and 90 points in 84 games over the past calendar year, as TSN analytics guru Scott Cullen points out in Friday’s installment of his daily Statistically Speaking column. Only Sidney Crosby (100) and Connor McDavid (95) have more points over that span, his 42 goals third behind Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, who share the top spot at 47.

If you go back to the start of December 2015, Scheifele has 101 points in 97 games, which trails only Crosby (126), Patrick Kane (120), and Brent Burns (110) on the leaderboard. He’s tied with Joe Pavelski and Nicklas Backstrom for fourth place, but has played nine fewer games than Backstrom and 14 less than Pavelski during that time. Of the 10 players to hit triple-digits in points over that span, he’s the only one to do it in fewer than 100 games.

Scheifele is one of the best players in the NHL, which is why the Jets gave the former seventh overall pick (2011) an eight-year, $49 million deal this past summer, when the 23-year-old was a restricted free agent. It’s also what makes it mind-boggling that he wasn’t among the six forwards representing the Central Division at last weekend’s All-Star Game in Los Angeles, as Jared Clinton of the The Hockey News pointed out in his piece on Tuesday, where he makes the case for Scheifele among the NHL’s best scorers.

Under team control at $6.125 million through the 2022-23 season, according to cap-friendly.com, the Jets have one of the most team-friendly contracts in the NHL, a cap hit Scheifele will almost certainly out-play. In fact, he already is, as his $115,566 value on cap-friendly’s cost-per-point index is the lowest among players making $6 million per season.

*You couldn’t have drawn it up any better. Auston Matthews gets stoned on a breakaway by Michael Hutchinson in overtime, Patrik Laine takes the feed from Dustin Byfuglien on the counterattack and puts a laser past Frederik Andersen for his first career hat trick.

*Speaking of which, who did I have in the hat trick challenge last night?

*Laine is unbelievable. His release is in mid-career form already. The first goal he scored on the night may have been his best yet, the poise in tight space along with ability to create space for himself before firing one past Andersen was quite impressive.

*High circle on the left side will now be named ‘Laine’s Office’.

*Going up 4-0 only to lose in overtime is the latest in Maple Leaf growing pains, something they’ve experienced plenty of through three games. Expect more over the course of the remaining 79. Such is expected of a young team flush with talent.

*Mark Scheifele with a three-point night. He’s up to six through four games.

*Jimmy Vesey talked the talk over the summer with his holdout until August 15 deadline for teams to sign drafted players, saying no to the Nashville Predators, who eventually traded his rights to Buffalo, where he said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ again. Signing with the Rangers days after being released into the open market, he’s walking the walk now. He has just one goal through four games, but he’s making things happen on the ice. On a breakaway chance in the first period of New York’s 2-1 loss to Detroit, he did everything but finish.

*Jimmy Howard looked like his old self on Wednesday, stealing the show with 32 saves as the Red Wings managed to win, 2-1, despite being outshot by a 33-18 margin. Since winning 130 games and posting a 2.35 GAA to go along with three seasons of .920-plus save percentages, Howard has won just 58 games with a 2.61 GAA and .909 save percentage in three seasons since. Petr Mrazek might have some competition on his hands.

*Chris Kreider’s three-game streak of multi-point games to begin the season was snapped, but he picked up an assist on Mika Zibanejad’s goal 1:09 into the game. He has points in 10 of 12 games going back to last season. He has 8-8–16 totals in those 12 games.

*Henrik Lundqvist has just an .875 save percentage through three games.

*Lightning prospect Taylor Raddysh with four more points for Erie Wednesday night in the OHL, now has seven goals and 21 points through eight games. The Bolts took him in the second round of this past draft. Can’t Steve Yzerman just catch a break for once?

*Minnesota prospect Dmitry Sokolov recorded his second hat trick in four games for Sudbury. All eight of his goals this season have come in his last five games.

*From the Western Canada U16 Challenge: Mitchell Brown had two goals and four points in British Colombia’s win over Manitoba. Brown, a defenseman already listed at 6-foot-1 and 176 pounds at 15 years old has his rights held by Tri-City. He plays for the Okanagan Hockey Academy in the CSSHL. He has a point in four games this season. He played at the bantam level last season, putting up 22 points in 25 games. Dylan Holloway scored with two seconds remaining to give Alberta the 4-3 win over Saskatchewan.

*First overall pick in the 2016 WHL Draft, Peyton Krebs, had two goals and an assist for Alberta. Krebs, who will suit up for Kootenay next season, has six goals and 15 points for the UFA Bisons AAA Midget team. He spent the last two seasons with the Rocky Mountain Raiders AAA Bantam squad, in which he put up 74 goals and 168 points in 60 games over the two seasons. He had 102 in just 27 games last year.

*Two more assists on Wednesday night for Cal Foote (son of Adam) a top defensive prospect for next year’s draft. He’s got eight assists in 11 games, but no goals.

*Medicine Hat hung 10 on Kootenay on Wednesday; the third time this season the Tigers have broken the seven-goal mark.

*Battle of Connecticut in college hockey as Quinnipiac took on UConn. The fourth-ranked Bobcats won 5-2 in a game closer than the score indicated.

Had Team North America gone as far as some thought they would at last month’s World Cup of Hockey, we’d already be calling it the Year of the Youngster.

From magnificent opening night performances Wednesday from Auston Matthews; who scored four goals in his NHL debut for Toronto, and Connor McDavid; the second-year forward who answered with a three-point game while playing a defenseman-like 23:27.

Not bad for young guys.

Patrik Laine, who was drafted second overall behind Matthews in June’s draft, continued the party on Thursday night, wasting no time getting on the scoresheet for Winnipeg. Laine buried his first career goal at 13:33 of the third period of the Jets 5-4 overtime win over Carolina.

With the Jets on the powerplay, Laine, camped out at the left point, took the point-to-point feed from Tobias Enstrom before ripping a laser of a wrist shot into traffic and beating Hurricanes goaltender Cam Ward top shelf. The goal was part of a Jets rally from 4-1 down within 15 minutes remaining in regulation. The rally was completed with Mark Scheifele’s goal 2:41 into overtime.

Laine, who also had an assist in 18:27 of playing time, is a big body on the wing at 6-foot-5 and 206 pounds. With that trademark wrist shot that was on display on Thursday, the 18-year-old was the best pure goal scorer in the most recent NHL Draft in June, in which he was the second overall pick. Laine’s stock rose rapidly throughout his draft year, in large part due to his showing at the 2016 World Junior Championships, where he put up seven goals and 13 points in seven games en route to Finland winning gold.